Via the Associated Press, military helicopter footage shows the extent of the weekend’s protests. Such footage comprises but a fragment of the mirror into which Morsi must see himself and the passion that he has inspired.
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Military sources told Reuters that once a two-day deadline set by the head of the armed forces expires at 5 p.m. (11:00 a.m. EDT) on Wednesday, the military intended to install an interim council, composed mainly of civilians from different political groups and experienced technocrats, to run the country until an amended constitution was drafted within months.
CAIRO – The clock is ticking for Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi to meet the demands of millions of protesters seeking his ouster and fresh elections after an ultimatum issued to the Islamist leader by his own armed forces.
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Egyptian media are reporting that a Dutch journalist was raped by several men in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday. According to a post from Sunday on the Facebook page of Dina Zakaria, an Egyptian journalist, “her condition is severe and she is hospitalized.”
Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that they saw a 13-year-old boy shot in the stomach as well as a 25-year-old man shot in the head with live gunfire, and another man shot in the eye with birdshot fired by a shotgun from the second or third floor of the building.
HRW. “Egypt: Security Forces Need to Act to Prevent Bloodshed.” July 2, 2013.
Operation Anti Sexual Harassment (OpAntiSH) announced Tuesday morning that it received over 17 new reports of sexual assault committed at the Tahrir Square sit-in on Monday, increasing the number of total alleged cases reported to at least 63.
A vigilante group formed to protect women in the square, which has become the epicentre of anti-government rallies, said it recorded the highest number of attempts — 46 — on Sunday as the majority of protesters were festive as families with small children and others spilled into side streets and across boulevards, waving flags, blowing whistles and chanting.
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The military does not seem to like unplanned things – and so I still have strong doubts this is a fait accompli. Obviously we will see more tomorrow, but I still have difficulty believing the military command thinks a second more public coup will be in their interest.
And there is also a theoretical argument to be made regarding delegitimizing even an imperfect structure that would otherwise be a primary building block for progressive reform. It’s a tricky balance.
The situation is less clear cut than most media seem to be suggesting. Some intelligent observers have noted that calls for return to military rule alongside Morsi’s ouster started appearing weeks before June 30.
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Considering the previous week’s media obsession with Turkish unrest, I was surprised by the rapidity and scale of what came together in Egypt on June 30, 2013. However, stepping way back for a moment to my own brief stint at the Office of Naval Research and introduction to the World Wide Web, one may interpolate but a little with regard to the development of the Internet (sometimes credited to the U.S. DoD’s “Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency”), the appearance of what I now call the “Islamic Small Wars” as an omnipresent subject in the American mind, among others, and, finally, the development this breathtakingly large global conversation. From all that, I think we may have to consider the following:
1. Allowing, encouraging, enabling Islam, and especially the Islamist or less constrained and zealous portion, to surface in a much enlarged cultural and intellectual landscape may have been in the works a long time. It is a “big picture” tack opposite suppression but also potentially more powerfully transforming.
2. When I moved to my small town in western Maryland, Egyptian military helicopters were refurbished in hangars about two or three miles from my door. The ability to produce and sustain a host of similar humdrum contracts and significant technology dependence may play into considerations within the Egyptian military and also account for Obama’s continuing military and other aid in the region as established. For the big political Petri dishes,there’s great freedom within each culture to grow as seen fit, but there are also these boundaries rendered invisible in agreements and contracts that may be intensely integrating between societies. The effect is to contain the encouragement and presence of “malignant narcissists” who rise as Islamic precepts — as Muhammad as general and absolute authority — whose behavior (and ruthlessness) would otherwise find no human restraints.
3. Finally, the challenges and complexities attending “modernity” — modern living — plus bedrock and practical value in the accumulation of a global intellectual process, albeit with the western ethos more expressed — discourage the too great aggrandizement of cultural father figures and the maintenance of power by way of intimidation, manipulation of information (“pander and slander”), and patronage.
IF the above seems or tests true in part or whole, then autocrats far outside the boundary may be finding themselves isolate and those within finding themselves changed or, as with President Morsi today, strongly encouraged toward compromise.
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